


The Crossover (& Crack) Drabbles

by crossingwinter



Series: Irresponsible Storytelling [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Crossover, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-01-16 03:56:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 12,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1331008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter titles contain relevant characters and/or pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Viserys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/gifts), [crookedneighbour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedneighbour/gifts), [Kateface](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kateface/gifts), [Justsummerborn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Justsummerborn/gifts), [theelusiveflamingo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theelusiveflamingo/gifts), [PrioritiesSorted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrioritiesSorted/gifts), [madaboutasoiaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madaboutasoiaf/gifts).



> Written for the anonymous prompt: Viserys meets Melisandre on the Isle of Faces. He doesn't know if she's alive or dead. He doesn't know if she's there to punish him or heal him. Go forth and drabble!

She is the trees, he thinks vaguely. Red and white, bone and blood and snow and the star that glows furious over his head and has since after he died. She stares at him, eyes burning with fervor, with fever, with knowledge, with recognition.

He wonders if she is the Old Gods. His mother had told him about the Old Gods—back before he died and lived and died again—that the Northmen worshiped their trees and listened for answers on the whispering wind.

He can’t remember if the Old Gods are vengeful or not. He wonders if he should be afraid.


	2. Tywin (Yu-Gi-Oh! verse)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [LYCN](loveyourcrookedneighbour.tumblr.com).

Tywin didn’t like being laughed at—certainly not by silver haired multi-billionaires like Maximilian Pegasus. He’d had enough of that at his old job.

"Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?" he asks, enunciating each word as if their letters had done him great personal injury.

"Oh—no, I don’t think so," laughed Pegasus. "Unless, of course, you happen to have the Millenium Puzzle tucked away there somewhere as well."

Tywin gritted his teeth and turned on his heel.

On his way out, he passed the two girls. The auburn-haired one was shuffling her deck. The blonde one was berating her. ”If you’d played your trap card instead of trashing it, you would have won, you know.”

It was at that moment that Tywin decided that he was going to quit. Who wanted to work for an empire built on the back of a children’s card game anyway?


	3. Melisandre x Stannis - Hogwarts AU - 3 Sentence Fic Meme

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [](robertarryn.tumblr.com>robertarryn</a>.)

Everyone thinks he’s so severe—he docks points if your shirt’s untucked, or if you are entering his class as the bell is still ringing (“You would have been late if you hadn’t heard it and sped up”). But she notices he never takes away points from her, even when she’s got her shirt unbuttoned so that he can get a glimpse of her cleavage, or even when she accidentally sets the desk on fire because she mispronounces the spell. If anything, she thinks it makes him smile.


	4. Westeros Families as Foods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crack prompt from [knightjaime](knightjaime.tumblr.com): please write a small paragraph where each characters represent food (and each house represents a food group of your choice) and they're fighting for the iron folk. (idk i need some humour in my life cause grrm)

It is said that the Iron Fork rejects those unworthy to be eaten, that propelled by the magical “hand” the fork picks and chooses between those that should be eaten.

At first, it was easy. When barbacue sauce first reached the plate, no one thought there would be any turning back. Especially the more meaty food groups were quick to succumb, and even the grains did. Only the fruits stood in defiance, refusing to let their sweet juices be tainted by the Sauce.

But then, the sauces were no more, except for two splatters on the table, far away from the plate, and the remaining foods were left alone with their natural flavors, wondering which would be selected by the Iron Fork next.

At first, it seemed the vegetables would be selected. The potato, heartiest of the vegetables, was the first to be selected by the fork, and, first accompanied by a portobello mushroom and its butter sauce, then by a hearty prime cut steak cooked in cream, into the mouth it went. 

It was only once the potato was gone that pandemonium broke out, as yam and beet opposed each other, primed for dominance. The red meats—porterhouse, filet mignon, flank, rib eye, strip steak, and the cream sauce that united all, save, for some reason, the sirloin—became divided as the white meats—chicken, quail, pork, and lamb—turned their backs on yam and beet. 

When yam triumphed over beet, it seemed that its victory was at hand, but soon yam found itself thwarted by the surprising addition of savory biscuits to the white meat side, which then sought to further fortify itself by establishing an alliance with the fruit platter. Meanwhile, the red meat forces found themselves cut away from their corner of the plate as the shrimp cocktail took the opportunity to expand its home base.

As all this escalated, no one paid attention to the droplets of barbecue, so far away and growing in influence, and what might happen once it made its way back to the plate…


	5. Jon x Daenerys

When he had pressed the “Thumbs Up” button on his hitch-hiker app, he was definitely not expecting this.

"You want a ride?" She was smirking at him, as though knowing exactly what was running through his head. Not that he was hiding anything. Honestly, how the fuck were you supposed to react when the person you’re hitching a ride from shows up riding a huge black dragon?

"Uhhhh," he said.

She snorted. ”Get on. He won’t bite.”

Jon shouldered his bag and scrambled up to seat himself behind her on the dragon’s back.

"You’re going to want to hold on," she said, placing his hands on her waist and kicking the dragon into the air.


	6. Stannis x Davos - Disney AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [onehotsummer](onehotsummer.tumblr.com): Stavos Disney AU

"You can’t fall in love with someone you met in one day!"

"Yes I can. That’s how love at first sight works, Stannis. And I love—"

"Don’t even say it. True love requires years of hard work, of toiling together through hardship, of loyalty, and trust, and service, and friendship. That’s what love is. You don’t love me."

"I do. But, if it’ll prove it to you, I’ll sign up for all that for the next…how many years are you suggesting here?"

"Fifteen?"

"Fifteen years then."


	7. Jon x Ygritte - Pretty Woman AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [roseswillcutyou](roseswillcutyou.tumblr.com).

"They wouldn’t sell to you?"

"Nope. They took one look at my blacks and said that they didn’t think I would be welcome and should send my patronage elsewhere."

"Well…they have shit for brains. Let’s go shopping."


	8. Theon - James Bond AU

He is too late, and he knows it—knows it from the moment he sees the door cracked open. His heart plummets like a rock. She’s lying in the bed, half clothed. She looks as though she could be asleep, though she can’t be, for there is no way she can breathe through the gold that coats her skin.

“Sansa,” he sighs, reaching out to touch her. The gold is hard, cold beneath his hands. I let her down, I let Robb down. He closes his hand around her golden hand and kicks off his shoe. He bends down to pick it up and presses the button that Q put in the instep, hearing it ring.

“M? This is 007. She’s dead.”

He hears M’s breath hitch. “Littlefinger?” M asks.

“Yes. He’s changed colors now, though. I think Goldfinger would be a more apt name.”

“007, get out of there. There’s nothing you can do for her. Find the bastard and track him and bring him in. Do that for me.” He hears the pain in M’s voice, the pain of a brother who has lost hope.

“Robb—”

“I said do it, 007.” It’s not Robb. Not Robb—Robb would let Theon try to comfort him. This is M, and he is Agent Greyjoy, and their relationship is nothing more than professional.


	9. Brienne - Mulan AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [donottalktomeinthemorning](donottalktomeinthemorning.tumblr.com).

They don’t even notice that she might even possibly be a girl. 

She’s so tall and her shoulders are so broad and her breasts are so small that they look like muscles. Big Brian, they call her, because that’s what she tells them to call her, and when they joke and laugh and talk about the girls they dream of, she keeps quiet because she doesn’t want to give herself away.

Not that they’d notice. When she does pipe up, when she does ask questions, or tries to convince them to be what soldiers should be (good, kind, brave—not lewd, crude, and arrogant), they roll their eyes. ”Brian’s got his delusions of grandeur again,” laughs Hyle.

"They aren’t delusions!" she snaps. "We could be great if we let ourselves be."

"Command doesn’t care if we’re great or not—they care that we kill some of Stannis’ men," replies Robar.

"But we should care. We’re the ones that have to live with ourselves.”

But they just laugh, and so Brian shuts up and goes back to polishing his armor. They don’t listen to her, not while she’s just another one of the boys, with dreams of valor before the guts and gore of battle beats them from her mind.


	10. Aerys, Rhaella & Steffon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [wetwasteofagirl](wetwasteofagirl.tumblr.com).

Aerys hates it when Steffon comes over. Steffon always steals his tricycle and gets mud all over it because he doesn’t know to stay away from the gutters. Steffon thinks mud is fun, and doesn’t mind it when he gets it into his hair. Not, of course, that it matters if it gets in his hair. His hair is so dark you can’t see the mud easily. And it’s so matted that it the mud doesn’t make anything worse. But Aerys’ hair is blonde and thin and soft and a little mud does a lot of damage to hair like that.

Rhaella doesn’t mind when Steffon comes over. Steffon is closer to her age than Aerys is, and he’s funny, the way he calls out that he “is the fury” (whatever that means) while they are riding bikes around the cul-de-sac. She rides her bicycle (it has training wheels now!) and he always steals Aerys’ bigwheel tricycle and makes zooming noises whenever he rolls through one of the puddles near the house, and Rhaella always laughs, even while Aerys’ snapping at her that it’s not funny, because it is—it is.

Steffon likes going over to his cousins’ house. He likes it better than his own. His house is so empty, except for Dad, who just sits at his computer all day, typing away, and it still smells like mom. He likes running down the road. Aerys and Rhaella have better toys, and their house is so full of life, even if Aerys is annoying and Rhaella is clingy. Better there with them than here by himself.


	11. Rickon & Shireen - James Bond AU

“What is that beauty?”

“Step away from that, Stark.”

“Oh, come on now—a toy like that is made to be played with.”

“I have strict orders from M—”

“Oh, M doesn’t need to know—”

“He will, actually, since he signs off on every single inventory assignment.”

“Well, in that case, I might just not sign it out so much as—”

“Well, the anti-burglary is on, so it’ll be tracked and you’ll have the rest of MI6 on you in about ten minutes.”

“Not if I outrun them.”

“Agent Stark, do you really want to test that?”

“Could be fun. Besides, it would be worth it just to see how far down M ground his teeth. You could probably use the enamel shavings to make some sort of explosive magic device or something.”

“All right, that’s it. Step away from the motorbike.”

“But it’s so—”

“Now, Stark.”


	12. Argella x Orys - Superhero AU

“What?  No.  No way.  I am not— _not_ —working with  _her!”_  Orys shouted.  Visenya rolled her eyes. 

“They aren’t my orders.  They come from the Dragon,” she shrugged. 

“Dark Sister—Visenya,  _wait!_ " but Visenya was leaving, holding a hand above up and dismising him, even with her back turned.

The door thudded shut and there was silence.

“Love you too, dear,” Storm said dryly.

“Oh fuck off,” Orys grunted, throwing himself back in his chair. 

“I’d love to.  Any suggestions about who’s good around here?  I’m new, you see.”

He couldn’t even look at her because he knew if he did— _fuck why did it have to be her?_

Argella—that was her real name, Argella—had been one of his better one night stands, dominant and energetic and  _hot_  to boot, with bright blue eyes, thick black curls, and tits that bounced when they fucked.  How the  _fuck_ was he supposed to have known that she was actually Storm? 

“So, here’s my thought—I raise the winds and the rain, and you hit them hard with a hammer,” Argella was suggesting.  She had thrown her feet up on the table and he wished he didn’t noticed the way her thigh-high (the observation made the hammer half-hard) clung to her like a second skin.  And fucking shit, did her costume have to be quite so revealing.  Couldn’t she have something like Visenya’s, a top cut like a turtleneck instead of a V-neck so low her breasts were practically popping out.  That couldn’t be practical, especially for someone who flew around everywhere.  Wouldn’t the wind just make them pop out?  Or was that part of her plan?  Did she actuallly fight bear breasted just to fuck with her—

“I’ll take that as a yes, since you can’t stop staring at my tits.”

She stretched, arching her back so that her breasts were even more in his face.

He groaned.  Oh this was going to be  _unbearable_. 


	13. Myrcella & Shireen - Marvel AU

It’s definitely Shireen—her hair lank, her face scarred, her blue eyes—the eyes she’d shared with Myrcella’s father—dead. Myrcella felt as though she’d been shot through the gut.

"Shireen?"

Shireen’s eyes flicker for a moment, and Myrcella’s heart surges. Then,

"Who the hell’s Shireen?" she demands, and she hurls another punch at Myrcella. Myrcella raises her shield just in time, and there’s a screech of metal against metal, Myrcella’s legs aching against the force of the punch. They haven’t ached like that since Gendry and his hammer back before the whole blowout with the Chitauri. 

Shireen keeps hurling punches, each one sending painful vibrations through Myrcella’s shield and arm and straight into her heart. But it’s not Shireen’s thrusts that hurt, it’s those blank blue eyes, the ones that don’t remember summer Sundays eating ice cream and walking through Prospect Park, and pulling pranks on Uncle Renly, and how excited they were to go off to war and fight Nazis. The same Shireen whose blue eyes are sunken into her skull and who has a red star on the shoulder of a metal arm.

Myrcella wants to fight, wants to scream, wants to grab her cousin, hold her cousin, make her remember because she’s here—they’re both here, completely out of time and it could be the two of them together in this mixed-up modern world if Shireen would just remember Sundays in Prospect Park…


	14. Gendry & Mya - Marvel AU

"It’s better for everyone that you remain locked away, sister."

She doesn’t look at him, not at all. He sees a smile—a sneer?—playing on her lips. 

"It must be nice to think that, brother," is all she says before she turns her back on him and crosses the room. "But if you think that locking me away is ever going to get father to love you…well, you’re more optimistic than I am."

"Father only wants to see justice."

"Father," the word cuts like ice ,"only wants everyone to do his work for him while he goes off and diddles his way across the universe. How many more of us do you think there are? Hmm? More than just you and me, do you suppose? Father never once cared. Not at all. And you can’t make him, brother."

Gendry clenches his jaw. Mya’s always seemed wise—always seemed controlled. She has always had a smooth surface. But now, suddenly, she’s…different. She’s always been different, like she’s always been screaming into a void and he’s never heard her—not until she almost destroyed Earth.

"You were trying to get his attention," Gendry says, realization filling his voice as he remembers her standing over New York.

She sighs. ”It didn’t work.”


	15. The Support Group

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [thelannisterbastard](thelannisterbastard.tumblr.com).

"Hi, my name is Podrick Payne."

"Hello Podrick."

"And I’m in limbo right now."

"Go on," said Ned’s severed head.

"See, I might be hanged," Pod mumbled.  "Well…by your wife."

"Excuse me," Catelyn said, "I think you mean by my revenant."

"Yes," Pod agreed sadly, "Sorry.  By your lady.  By your revenant.  By Lady Stoneheart."

"So how long have you been victimized by George R. R. Martin?" asked Ned’s severed head.

"Well, I’ve had a pretty shitty life up ‘til now, to be quite honest," Pod sighed.  "So I’d say the past thirteen years."

"We all have," agreed Sansa quietly, taking his hand and smiling at him gently.

"Thirteen years is a long time," said Tyrion.  "I hope you’ll come out of it soon."

The circle agreed.  Ned’s head nodded towards Sansa.

"Hello, I’m Sansa Stark," she said shakily.

"Hello Sansa."

"And I’ve been victimized by George R. R. Martin for the past two years now.  And it’s not going to let up any time soon, unfortunately."


	16. Willas x Oberyn - Immortal/non-immortal AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [nedsseveredhead](nedsseveredhead.tumblr.com).

"So you just read?"

"Yes."

"All day."

"Yes."

"Every day."

"Yes."

"For  _five hundred years?”_

"What would you have done?  There’s just so much to know!" 

"I don’t know.  Eaten some Ice Cream?  Climbed to the top of Mount Everest?  Rebuilt the Bastille out of matches?  Banged all of Monaco?"

"None of those sounded very appealing to me."

"So you just read.  A lot."

"Yes."

"You’re unbelievable."

"I’m sitting here, having been alive for five hundred years, and you’re going with the fact that I went and read most of that time as what makes me unbelievable?  Not the strangely long life, or anything?"

"Yes."

"Here’s the thing—Eternity is long.  Very, very long.  It seems short to you because you only know how short your own life is.  But for me…it’s long.  And I’ve lost too many friends, but the ones I read about last forever.  So, thank you, I’ll stick to my books."

"That’s remarkably morbid."

"So is life.  Life, as it turns out, has a fatality rate of one hundred percent."

"Well, not quite."

"I don’t count."

"If you say so."


	17. Argella x Orys - Harry Potter AU

"Excuse me, what are you doing here?"

"I—I—"

"Did you just apparate into my house?"

"Yes…I seem to have.  I’m terribly sorry.  It was a mistake.  I was aiming for Storm’s End and—"

"This is Storm’s End.  Get out.  Get out  _now._ ”

"Wait, but I am looking for Argilac Durrandon and—hey! You don’t need to be throwing things now, let me explain myself!"

"You come into my house and look for my father without any invitation?  Were you raised in a barn?  Leave now and come knock on the door like your mother should have taught you when you were four!"

"But I’m already here and—"

“ _Now_.”

*

"See?  Was that so hard?"

"I didn’t mean to be rude."

"Mean to be rude?  While apparating directly into another witch’s house?  Surely not."

"My name is Orys Baratheon and—"

"I know who you are.  I’m not stupid.  What do you want?"

"I’m looking for Argilac Durrandon because—"

"He’s dead, you know."

"I had heard a rumor."

"Well, it’s true.  So you can get out now."

"Look—I didn’t come all this way…you’re his daughter, yes?"

"So what if I am?"

"You’ve already said that you are."

"Hardly relevant."

"Can you just…can you let me explain myself?"

"But I’m having so much fun interrupting."

"Yes, but it’s very hard to actually spit out what it is that I want to say and—"

"Fine.  I’ll stop."

"My brother Aegon is trying to unite the—"

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get out."

"But—"

"If you’re here trying to convince me to join  _Aegon Targaryen_  you’ve got another thing coming to you.  Get out.”

"But—Ok! Ok! There’s no need to throw hexes."


	18. Oberyn x Jaime

He’s not entirely sure which is more entertaining—the fact that Jaime Lannister knows how to kiss like a true Dornishman, or that it looks rather like Tywin Lannister would destroy him with his glare if such a thing were possible. For the former, it seemed that rumors of Arthur Dayne’s fondness for the Lannister boy may have been true; for the latter…Oberyn wasn’t worried.

Besides, what does Tywin Lannister think—that his son will forsake his vows and marry some nice little wife and have nice little Lannister children? The thought is silly, and surely Lord Tywin knew it. So, why not add insult to injury and watch as his golden son is dragged off to bed by Elia Martell’s brother.

The world is a fitting place. And he supposes, if he and Ellaria can’t have Cersei in their bed, at least they can have Jaime.


	19. Starks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [humboldt-squid](http://humboldt-squid.tumblr.com).

Catelyn knew within four days of them starting.  It wasn’t exactly hard to work out.  Her sewing basket was  _all_  out of sorts, and they both had huge dark circles under their eyes and gave each other significant glances when the newscasters got into debates about Grey Wind and The Ghost.

Not to mention the fact that, once she looked closely at the photographs in the  _Daily News_ , it was pretty evident that it was Robb.  What, was she not supposed to recognize her eldest son’s facial structure because he was wearing a (rather poorly conceived) mask?  The thought almost made her laugh into her tea.

Ned worked it out a few days later when Jon was wincing every time he stood up, and Ned caught a glimpse of a tremendous bruise across his stomach when he was making his way from the shower to his bedroom—as quickly as possible so that no one could see.  The only way that you could get a bruise like that was if you’d—but no.  No, Jon wouldn’t be so stupid as to get himself kicked in the ribs repeatedly by a giant, would he?  No.

But he was.  Because every time The Ghost threw himself in front of Grey Wind to protect him from some attack or another, Jon had a new set of bruises.

"I’m trying out for the football team, dad," Jon had said when asked.  "It’s nothing.  Just a little bit of roughhousing."

And seeing the way that Cat bit her lip, Ned knew that she knew, and suddenly Robb and Jon weren’t the only ones sharing significant glances over the news specials.

Arya and Sansa figured it out at the same time.  Sansa was helping Arya run lines for the school play when they saw the two of them, clad in spandex, limping up the driveway.  The two girls hid, and the next morning, when Robb and Jon were cracking bad puns about Roose Bolton’s defeat by the crime-fighting duo, Arya and Sansa saw their parents rolling their eyes, and they knew that they knew too.  And, looking across the table and seeing Bran watching all of them, Sansa realized that he knew as well, and Arya realized that he must have climbed up onto the roof to look at the stars again and caught their older brothers coming home.

No one knew how Rickon found out.  But he was the one that broke the silence in the end.  

"When you’re wearing your super hero costumes, it looks like your pants are too tight," he said, chomping into his cereal one morning.

Robb’s and Jon’s jaws dropped as one.  And it was that, as much as everything else, that made the rest of their family burst out laughing.


	20. In The Flesh AU - Shireen & Myrcella

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A birthday present for [Trebuchettully](http://trebuchettully.tumblr.com).

Shireen stares at herself in the mirror, knowing that no amount of mousse will be able to cover the scar on her cheek.  It’s rotted and pocked and horrible and she heard one of the nurses saying that she’d been…been under some maggots had begun eating through her cheek.  She can’t remember that though.  She can’t remember anything except—

"You ready?" asks one of the nurses, poking her head around the corner of the door.  

"Just a sec," says Shireen, and she finishes putting in her contact lenses.  They’re a different shade of blue than her eyes had been before—darker, more like water and less like sky.  But she doesn’t think anyone’ll notice that.  They’ll probably be too busy staring at her cheek.  She lifts the sponge forlornly to her cheek one last time, as if the mousse could repair the dead flesh, but it just congeals in the crannies of her skin.  She puts it back into the plastic container and screws the top on, then dumps it into the dufflebag of her stuff—the ruined black and yellow dress her parents had had her buried in and her mousse and sixteen boxes of contact lenses.

They’re waiting for her in the hallway outside, but it’s not the “they” she was expecting.  

"Shireen?"  Myrcella sounds like she can’t breathe and her green eyes go so wide when she sees her.  She sees Tommen too—taller than he had been when she’d died.  Shireen raises a hand and gives her a lame sort of half smile as Myrcella crosses the space between them and wraps her arms around her. 

"Hi ‘Cella," she mumbles into her cousin’s—Myrcella’s ear is missing.  She wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t right there, but it’s gone, and there’s a thin line of a scar running down her cheek too.  

"What—what happened?" is all she can think to ask, gesturing to Myrcella’s ear.

"Got bit by a rabid—had to cut it off," she says, grimacing.  

"Oh.  Sorry."  She doesn’t know what else to say.  What else could she say.  Except the obvious, of course.  "Where—where are my parents?"

Tommen’s eyes go wide and he stares between Shireen and Myrcella, biting her lip.

"You—you don’t remember?" Myrcella asks slowly.

Shireen remembers a lot of things: a coffin with a blue silk lining, the earth as she pulled herself up through dirt wondering if this could be a dream, the taste of—oh.  Oh no.  Oh no no no.

She hears the bag fall out of her hands and she’s sitting on the ground now, though she didn’t remember telling her legs to take her there, because that’s it—that’s the memory—her and Patchface eating the brain out of her mother’s head as Myrcella levels a gun and blows his head to bits.


	21. may the force be with you--always (arya star wars au)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [madaboutasoiaf](http://madaboutasoiaf.tumblr.com).

they blew up her home—blew it up right in front of her and she’d felt her heart clench because it was worse than any nightmare watching winterfell be blasted to smithereens, knowing her father was there, her mother was there, her sister and her brothers were there, and she was  _here_  watching them  _die_  and unable to do anything.  

she doesn’t make a sound, she doesn’t let herself cry, she doesn’t do anything.  she won’t give them the satisfaction of knowing that everything inside her feels numb and when lord targaryen orders that she be executed, part of her knows that even if she is to die tomorrow, it’s not worse than knowing she’s the last one left, the only one left.

she hates it.  she hates it, hates them, hates that she was captured and hopes like she’s never hoped before that those droids made it safely to old joe mormont, because he’ll know what to do with them.   _he’s a jedi knight_ ,  _they’ll listen to him, even if he’s not me._   

she can’t sleep because every time she closes her eyes she sees the beams of light gathering and shooting at winterfell as if the blast had been seared into her retinas.  it probably had been—a bright light like that.  

it is not a thought that comforts her.  

but when the doors to her cell open, she sees smoke and hears the sounds of blasters and what is unmistakably the yell of a wookiee, and the stormtrooper who pushes his way inside—uncharacteristically—rips off his helmet and hisses “joe mormont sent us.  we’re here to save you, come on!”

she’s not sure if it’s because he says joe mormont’s name, or because he looks like her father—long faced, grey-eyed and everything—but she follows him, figuring, at the very least, this way she can die fighting.

* * *

she likes jon.  jon’s easy.  he’s kind and respectful.

gendry, on the other hand, has a mouth on him.

first off—he calls her princess.  non-stop.  and mock bows and steps aside to let her through doors of the millenium bull.  as if it wasn’t  _her_  that got them out of that death star alive, the number of times she’d had to shoot storm troopers just because his battle tactic was more of a run-and-shout-loudly and had less finesse than arya had had when she was ten.  she wonders if he’s stupid, but decides he’s brave instead because he comes back unharmed.  though, given the smirk he gives her, she definitely thinks he’s a little of both.

the millenium bull is a tin can, and she tells gendry so once they’re flying.  ”she’ll get us there, though,” he says proudly as he sits in the cockpit and kicks his feet up.  ”and if she isn’t good enough for you, you can find a different way to your rebel camp, princess, and damn your reward.”

"oh so this is all about the money, then?"

he gives her a withering glare, as if she doesn’t understand anything at all, as if she’s the stupid one.  ”well yeah.  not all of us are royalty.   _princess_.”

she crosses her arms over her chest and says, “then i shall make sure that you are duly paid.”  and she turns on her heel and goes to find jon.  he’s sitting in a stock room, staring at his lightsaber, and she aches for him.  she knows what it’s like to watch someone you love die.

"were you close to him?" she asks.

"he was all i had left," sighs jon.

"he gave that to you?" she points at the lightsaber.

jon nods.  ”it belonged to my father though.  he was a jedi knight.  before he died.”

"when did you learn to fight with it?" she asks.

jon glances at her, and he looks so like her father that she feels her throat tighten.  ”still working on it, to be honest.  i’m not near as good as joe was.”

"well, you’re better than me," she says enviously.  she’s always wanted a lightsaber.  she knows that blasters are practical, both for long- and short-range fighting, but there’s something so elegant about the lightsaber.  "i wouldn’t know what to do with it."

"here’s your first lesson," jon says as he turns the lightsaber on, "stick ‘em with the pointy end."

arya laughs.  ”i could have guessed that one for myself, thanks.”

* * *

gendry doesn’t take the money in the end.  well, he does.  and he leaves.  but he comes back.  and when they move the rebel base to last hearth, he comes with them, though the hyperdrive on the bull goes screwy mid-route and he can’t fly out the way he keeps threatening.

arya’s glad of that.  he’s an asset to the team—has a good mind for practical tactics.  and the other rebels like him.  she thinks they fight harder when he’s around.  

and then sometimes he’s ridiculously stupid.  or brave.  maybe both.  probably just stupid though.  like when he goes out into the raging snow storm because jon’s not back yet, and jon won’t survive the night alone—he’ll freeze to death, so gendry goes out too, and arya could kill him, because even as she shouts at him not to go, shouts at him that he should at least let her come too so that he won’t be alone when  _he_  freezes to death, he doesn’t listen.

she has half a mind to follow him herself, but jaqen rests a hand on her shoulder and murmurs, “a girl has more courage than sense.  would a girl have all three of you lost in one night?”

"i can’t just leave them," she says, turning to him, but by then, it’s too late and the gates have sealed for the night.

* * *

"i was stupid?  i got him back, didn’t i?" gendry demands angrily.

"stupid, stupid, stupid,  _stupid_ ,” she says, shoving him.  he doesn’t budge, he just widens his eyes at her, and she rounds on jon who raises his hands in self defense.  his skin is still wet and crinkly from the hot soak, and he looks a little like a boiled lobster.  his expression changes from defensive to trepidation as she bends close and kisses him full on the mouth.  it feels weird—very weird, but she has a point to prove.  ”i’m glad you’re all right.” she says to him.

"how come he’s not stupid?" gendry demands, but arya just stalks out of the room.

* * *

gendry is stupid—stupid, stupid, stupid.  and she could kill thoros for selling him out, for selling them  _all_  out to lord targaryen, and sticking gendry in carbon and shipping him off like he never meant a thing to them.  and god she wishes that jon were there with his lightsaber he’d cut them all down, and he’d use the force and make all their weapons fall to pieces or something.  she can’t do anything,  and she  _hates_  it—why is it that whenever targaryen’s in the room, she feels like a helpless little girl?  

she’s not a helpless little girl—she’s  _not_  she’s a direwolf like her father. 

and she glares at him, as if wishing the same beams that destroyed winterfell would pierce him right through, and he just laughs and says she reminds him of her aunt lyanna.

"don’t you dare mention her!" she shrieks.

"why not?" he says.  "does it make you afraid?  or angry? do you hate me?"

"you don’t deserve to say her name," she spits, and he laughs his wheezing laugh and not for the first time she wishes that robert’s hammer had fully smashed his chest in and not just partway.

"of course i don’t.  guards.  have her brought to my ship.  she’ll be a gift for the emperor."

she struggles against them, and they have to bind her wrists and drag her, and even as she digs her heels into the floor she knows that it’s no use, but she’s not one to give up without a fight, not when—

one of the guards yelps and drops her wrist and she stares.

his blaster is moving—zooming through the air away from him.   _jon!_  she thinks excitedly, looking around for him, but he’s not there.   _i wish i were—_ and her cuffs unlock and she grabs the blaster and fires.

* * *

she makes thoros turn the bull around to find jon, because she hears his voice in her head, feels it in her bones the way she’d felt when the blaster had moved and her cuffs had unlocked.

it makes her shiver.   _but i’m not a jedi.  i don’t have any training in the force._  but she doesn’t have time to think on it as she tugs jon into the bull.  he’s pale and shaking and his hand has been seared off, and she hates lord targaryen even  _more_  than she already did, and tells jon so.

he goes even paler and shakes his head and doesn’t say anything at all.

* * *

it’s her idea—her idea to go in and get gendry.  jon’s on her side, of course, and between the two of them, they hatch a plan that arya’s sure will work.

* * *

it does.  after a fashion anyway.  they get gendry out.  and arya’s glad he’s blind for most of it because she would  _hate_  to have him see her forced to wear  _that_ .  it’s as much for that outfit as for the pain he caused gendry that she strangles gregor clegane, but when she does, she doesn’t feel better—she feels worse, if anything.  

there’s nothing in the universe quite like seeing the light go out of someone’s eyes and it’s not as comforting as she wants it to be.

she does her best to shake it off, but it doesn’t go away, even when she rants to jon about the stupid bikini, because it’s disgusting and vile and gross and horrible and she wants to burn the thing.  jon gives her his robe to wear on the way back to their ship, and she wraps it tight around herself as she sits with gendry and tells him not to be so stupid ever again.

* * *

they land on the moon of cailin and, unsurprisingly, it takes less than an hour for everything to fall apart.  they end up chasing scouts on speeders through the woods, and arya rides on the back of jon’s and fires her blaster at them while he steers.  they make a good team, her and jon, seamless.  

when he gets his own speeder, she gets knocked off hers, but at least she blows up the last trooper before she faints.

she comes to to find a small woodland creature poking her with a stick.  it looks like a teddy bear, or maybe very furry small child, and it freaks out when she sits up.  she takes off her helmet and extends it for him to investigate, then offers him some of her food.  he makes a little contended noise, and comes to sit on her lap, and arya grins.  he’s warm, and perfectly nice, and makes her feel a lot better about having no idea where she is or where the others are.

* * *

"oh you stupid idiots!" she mutters under her breath.  the ewoks are trying to cook jon and gendry over a fire, and she sighs dramatically even as jon calls out in excitement, "arya! we thought you were dead!" and gendry shouts, "can you please make them stop?"

she rolls her eyes and turns to the one who brought her and begins explaining everything.  they don’t seem to believe her at first, but her friend trusts her, and with his help, jon and gendry are removed from their spits and welcomed to join the dinner, rather than ending up dinner.

jon doesn’t stay for long, though.  he sneaks off while the ewoks are playing music and dancing, and arya follows him.

"you’re going up there, aren’t you?" she asks him.

he doesn’t look at her.  ”i have to.”

"you don’t—let someone else take him.  you have more courage than sense."

jon just shakes his head and turns to her.  ”it has to be me.  it has to be.”

"i don’t understand."

"arya—he’s my father."

and her heart stills, because he looks so like her own father that part of her had hoped…

"oh."

"yeah…"

"well…good luck then…"

"arya?"

"yeah?" 

"my mother…she’s your aunt.  your aunt lyanna.  you’re my cousin."

and she pelts herself into jon’s arms, wrapping her arms around him so tight because if only for this moment, she’s not the last one left—she’s not completely alone, because she has jon, jon’s her blood too. 

 _i knew it_ , she thinks.   _he’s so like father._

* * *

she gets shot.  she hasn’t gotten shot before—not once.  but she gets shot and she collapses against the wall of the bunker and gendry stands over her and blasts everything that gets within his range.  

that doesn’t stop him from getting snuck up on, of course.  and a trooper has a blaster to his back.

"freeze! drop your weapon!"

the trooper can’t see arya, though, and she brings her blaster up from it’s holster.

"i love you," gendry says in awe, and she smiles as he steps aside and she shoots the trooper in the leg, and then gendry hits him over the head, knocking him out. 

then he looks around, and grabs her.  ”we’ve got to move,” he says, pointing at an AT-ST.  she bites back a curse as the wound in her side burns but she hurries to keep up with him and she hears the explosion behind her and knows that it’s all up to thoros now—thoros and jon and god she hopes jon has the wit to get out of there in time, because she couldn’t bear it if she were the last one, not so soon after she’d learned that jon was  _family_.

"you’re worried about him," gendry mutters.

"of course i am," she says, staring at the sky, staring at the death star, almost as if she had willed it, it explodes.  and she hears the cheers around her, and closes her eyes and  _feels_  him, the way she had after gendry had been taken.

"i understand.  and when he gets back, i won’t get in the way."

she almost laughs, laughs with relief, laughs because gendry’s being stupid.

"it’s not like that," she says.  "he’s my cousin."

"you’re—"

"cousin."

"oh."

and she grabs the front of his vest and pulls his lips to hers.

* * *

she’s never been happier to see him, and she throws her arms around his neck, and he musses her hair.  ”good to see you, little cousin,” he whispers into her ear and she grins—grins because she’s not alone, she’s not the last at all.


	22. Stannis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [imaginestannisbaratheon](http://imaginestannisbaratheon.tumblr.com/post/110832507408/imagine-stannis-baratheon-drawing-fanart-of):
>
>> imagine stannis baratheon drawing fanart of himself on the iron throne and davos comes in and catches him and as stannis is trying to hide it the picture flies right out of the window and right into jon snow’s hands.
> 
> #stannis baratheon #would never complete fan art unless is was wholly accurate #somebody write the fic please (via [madaboutasoiaf](http://madaboutasoiaf.tumblr.com).

Robert had always slumped when he’d sat the throne.  He’d been a little too tall, and he’d been scared of hitting his head against one of the swords—though he’d never said as much.  Stannis though…Stannis would sit tall and proud when he sat the thing.  Tall and regal—like Tywin Lannister had that day in the throne room, except not at  _all_  like Tywin Lannister—he would _never_  be like Tywin Lannister and his traitorous blood.

Stannis gnashed his teeth.

He had drawn with Shireen when she’d been little, and she’d always said he’d been very good.  He had been.  But his hands are shaking now from the cold, and he can’t quite make his crown look like it’s sitting atop his head properly. His beard also looks more like a series of squiggles, and a series of squiggles is  _Robert’s_  beard, not Stannis’.  Stannis’ should look like some neat little lines.  Very neat.  Orderly.   _Orderly_  damn it all.


	23. The Secret Garden AU

It had been a long while since Arya Stark had smiled.  She hadn’t smiled since India, since losing her parents to cholera and being shipped back to England.  

They’d called her contrary on the ship because she’d been sad.  They’d called her long-faced.  ”Arya Horseface” Jeyne Poole had sung at her and made neighing sounds that only made Arya scowl even more.

It had been a long while since Arya Stark had smiled, but now she felt one creeping across her face, the way the green gauze had crept over the garden walls.  Because Bran is smiling.  Bran is smiling as Meera pushes his chair through the secret door of their secret garden and his pale, sunken face didn’t look so pinched right now.  His blue eyes—the same ones that her mother had had—are the exact same shade as the sky over head only they were sparkling with wonder and pure delight because this…

"You were telling the truth," Bran says in wonder.  "There really is a secret garden here.  There really is!"  He takes a deep breath and his lips even seem redder than they did in the dark old house.  "It smells so lovely." 

Arya reaches up and breaks a rose off of a bush and brings it to her nose.  It’s so delicate and gentle against her nose, and the petals are so soft.  She hands it to Bran and he clutches at it with thin fingers.  

"I’m coming back here every day," he declares.  "I don’t care that I’m crippled.  I’m coming back here every day.  This place will make me well.  I  _know_  it.”  He stares at her in wonder.  ”Every day.  If we come back every day, I’m sure I’ll be well again soon.  The air.  It’s good air.  I can tell.”  

Arya doesn’t know how Bran could tell, but that doesn’t matter.  Meera is saying, “My mother always said that good air in your lungs can fix any ill that ever was.”

"I don’t think it will fix my back," Bran says, but he hardly sounds sad about it now—not nearly so sad as when Arya had first met him and he’d spoken of the accident that had taken his legs from him.  "But it will fix my lungs.  And my circulation.  And…and everything else!"  He turns to look back at Arya.  "And if it weren’t for you, I’d still be in my room with my shutters nailed closed.  I’d never be well without you."  

She’d hidden when the cholera had come.  She’d hidden because she’d heard shouting and fear coming from the compound, and they’d all left her behind—they’d all forgotten her.  She hadn’t felt wanted—not on the ship, not even when she’d arrived here, but Bran…Bran makes her feel wanted again.  And she takes the back of his chair and pushes him through the garden, showing him all that she’d brought back to life.


	24. On The Narrow Sea (Gendry and Yara)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Glaurie and Eyelinerstains

“There’s something in the water!  Off the starboard bow!”

Yara pulls her glass out of her belt and raises it to her eye.  There is, indeed, something in the water, off the front of their ship.  Or rather–something  _on_  the water.

“You there!” she calls out, and the young man in the rowboat turns.  He’s got a full beard, and his eyes are clear and blue, she can see that from the distance.  “What are you doing so far out at sea?”  While the Narrow Sea is narrow, it’s not _that_  narrow.  Only an idiot would row on open water.

“I don’t know?” the man wails back.  “I don’t know.  I was just trying to get to land and then a storm happened, and I don’t know where I am.  I’ve been collecting rain and fog water in this bail bucket and grabbing fish with my bare hands and eating them raw.  Please, for the love of the gods, please let me board!”

Yara raises her eyebrows, and looks at her crew.  Most of them look torn between surprised and appalled.  What sort of man asks to be taken aboard an ironborn longship?  Does the man have a death wish?  Or maybe he just doesn’t know that they’re ironborn.  They had been aiming for stealth when they’d booked it around Westeros to get to the Dreadfort.

“Um,” Yara says, “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but we’re a bit…”

“I don’t care!” the man yells.  “Please I beg of you, I’l swab your deck but my arms will fall off if I keep rowing.”

“How long have you been rowing?” Yara asks, dreading the question.

“Since last season!” the man calls.

“Is that four or three?” Qarl shouts.  It’s April, after all, and that makes it a little hard to tell.

“Has it been two seasons?” the man groans.  “Oh gods save me.  Please tell me it’s not been two seasons.”

“We’ve only just started the fifth,” Yara responds gently.  She goes and grabs a rope and hurls it to the poor man.  “And I don’t know if you’ve got a plan at all, but we’re taking the scenic route back to the Iron Islands.  My dad’s got everything under control over there, and my brother is fucked right now, and  _I_ ,” she rolls her eyes heavily, wondering who had written that script, “can’t really do anything about it right now.  So I figured maybe a vacation down to the Summer Islands.  Or Dorne.  Everyone and their mother’s going to Dorne this season, I hear.”  

“Dorne sounds nice, but all I want is to stop rowing.  And maybe burn that rowboat.  Do you think boats can burn properly on water?  I’m supposed to worship the lord of light in the books, so a fiery grave for the thing would be appropriate, but show canon kind of turned me off that.”

“Oh?” Yara asks.  He’s got the rope now and is pulling himself towards the longship.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says darkly.

“Fair enough,” she says.  She gives the rope a tug and it goes taught.  “Ready?”

“Yes.”

“All right, gents.  Heave!”

The crew hauls the man into the ship, and he almost cries with relief, rubbing his arms.

“Oh thank gods,” he nearly sobs.

“What’s your name?”

“Gendry,” he responds.  “Thank you…”

“Yara.”  

“Yara.  Sounds like Arya.”

“It was supposed not to sound like Osha.”

“Ah.  That’s…confusing?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.  So.  Now that you’re aboard…the Summer Isles?”

“Sounds delightful.”


	25. Barristan & Aerys

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for aerysii.

Barristan wakes with a splitting headache from too much whiskey and the scent of burnt….burnt what?  Oh god.  What’s burning?  What’s burning now?  What the fuck has–

He opens his eyes and rolls out of bed, lunging for the door and going into the living room.  There’s a fire in the fireplace, and Aerys is sitting in front of it, sticking newspapers in it.

“Aerys–we sealed the floo!” Barristan exclaims, hurrying to the kitchen for a pitcher to fill with water.  “What the fuck are you thinking?”

“Did you know that Elvis Presley’s crown of King of Rock and Roll is stolen?  That everyone gives him credit for the music made by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but no one gave a shit because she was a black woman?”

Barristan groaned and brought a pitcher of water over to the fire place.  “No,” he said firmly.  

“Yes!” Aerys shouts.  “Burn the imposter king!”  

It’s only then that Barristan sees precisely what’s burning in the fireplace and he groans.

“My vinyls!”  All his Elvis Presley albums, carefully tended over the years are melting onto the hearth.  The smell of them will probably never leave the room.

“Your false king burns,” Aerys hisses.  “Long live Rosetta’s memory!”

“I should never have left you alone with these,” Barristan sighs.  “More fool me.”

“A fool who loves his king too much,” says Aerys.  He sits down in front of the hearth and stares at the flame, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.


	26. Starfleet Commander

“What’s that system, Captain?”

“That’s Terros, Major.”

“Why aren’t we going there?  Surely they will wish to join the rebellion?”

“Fuck no.  It’s awful there.  Jesus.  Literally the worst system in the universe.  Living hell.  Backwards society.  Best avoided, honestly.  Fuckin’ sucks.”

“Have you been there, Captain Stark?”

Benjen stares at the dark blue dot ahead of them, his face somber, and after a while Major Cox settles in and sets new travel coordinates.  When he’s sure the major can’t hear him anymore, Benjen murmurs, “Yes.  I’ve been there.”  Then turns on his heel and marches towards his quarters, his black uniform providing a harsh contrast against the fluorescent lights.


	27. Elia x Lyanna

Everyone knows of the Princess Elia.  She is witty and kind and intelligent.  She is fair as well, though all will say that it is her laughter that men will notice first. 

Everyone knows of the Princess Elia, and they speak of her with sorrow.  She is doomed to die, you see.  Doomed, for her husband has died in war, and if ever she leaves the tower in which she and her children are besieged, they will all be slain.  The Lord of Lions is at her gates, the Mountain that Rides and the Stag Lord who has claimed the crown that would have been her husbands.

Princess Elia is an intelligent princess.  She knows she cannot leave—she knows too that they cannot be seen to force her out, lest the people think they mistreat a harmless, blameless widow.  She knows she is doomed, but it is daggers in the night that await her, a push out of a window to make it look like a fall—not a public execution.

So she keeps her doors firmly closed, and writes letters to her brothers—far away and unable to help her—letting them know that she is well, and that she will remain in the tower for the rest of her life.

Princess Elia watches the Stag Lord crowned, watches him marry the Lion Lord’s daughter, and beoman that his friend the Wolf Lord’s younger sister had disappeared many years before for it was  _she_  he loved, not his lion bride.  But mostly, Princess Elia watches the watchmen he employs to observe her tower day and night, to make sure that she does not leave, that she cannot escape.  She watches as a young knight in armor of white and red and with a laughing tree on his shield take the post each day, and knows that that knight is her enemy.

Days turn into weeks, weeks to months, and every day, she sees the Knight of the Laughing Tree at her gates.  She wonders what he must think of this task, of keeping her safe inside while also keeping her prisoner.  Does he enjoy his task?  Does he think her dangerous?

It is not until the midwinter festival that she learns.

She hears a knock on the door of her tower, far below, and she looks out the window to see the knight standing there, peering up at her window.

“Will you let me in?” the boy asks.  He is a boy—his voice is too high for him to be a man fully grown, and he is small in stature. 

“Why would I do that?” Princess Elia demands.

“I mean to rescue you.”

Princess Elia raises her eyebrows.  She bids her daughter to stay where she is and goes down to the door, opening a peep hole.

“And why should I trust you, ser?” she demands.  “Surely you mean to kill me in the night and earn favor of your king.”

“I desire no such thing, Princess,” the boy says. 

Princess Elia laughs.  “And why should I believe that?  I’m no fool.”

The knight raises the visor of his helm, and Princess Elia feels her jaw drop for he is not a man, or a boy at all.  He is a woman, long faced and grey eyed.  The Wolf Lord’s sister, the lady Lyanna, who had disappeared long ago.

“I swear on my honor I will not betray you,” said the lady–the knight?–Lyanna.  “I swear on the lives of my dead father and brother.  I swear on the lives of your children.  You will be safe and you will be free.”

“Why?” Princess Elia heard herself saying. 

“No woman should know a cage,” says the lady knight.  “No woman should live in fear.”

They are brave words, and bold.

“And what of you, ser?” Princess Elia asks.  “What will you do when all this is over?”

“I shall follow my heart,” said the lady Lyanna.  “I shall no know bonds that I do not give myself.”

The Princess Elia was a clever woman.  And she knew she should suspect a trick.  But there was something in Lady Lyanna’s voice that she trusted—that she believed.  And so in the dark of knight, while the Stag King’s court reveled, the Knight of the Laughing Tree brought the princess and her children from the tower.  By the time the lords and ladies of the castle knew what had happened, they were far away, and could not be found—not even a small sign for the king’s spider to track.

Princess Elia did not die in the tower, nor did she die leaving it.  Lady Lyanna brought her home to her brothers, who wept to have her safe and sound, and who delighted in her children, who were much grown since last they had seen them.  Princess Elia, kind and witty and intelligent, lived the rest of her days in peace and happiness and safety in the home she’d known as a girl.

And the Knight of the Laughing Tree?  Lady Lyanna stayed with her as well.  For she kept her oath to follow her heart, and her heart she had quite given to Princess Elia.


	28. Sansa x Edric (Legally Blonde)

“Everything all right?”

Sansa turns around, and blinks twice.  “Eyes up here, mister,” she says firmly.  Just because she’s wearing a bunny suit and fishnets and heels and bunny ears does  _not_  mean that Ned Dayne gets to look at her like that.  But she’s choosing to channel her humiliation into power right now.  It’s the only way.

“Sorry—sorry—it’s just not every day that one walks into the bookstore and finds a One-L in a playboy bunny get-up.”

“You must not get out much,” she says pertly.  Ned snorts.

“Well, I am studying for the Bar…” he mutters.  “Can I ask the occasion, or—”

“Can’t a girl come buy study materials without getting harassed?” Sansa asks.

“Yes,” Ned says.  And he doesn’t continue.  He was trying to be nice.  Of that Sansa’s sure.  He’s never been cruel to her—and he certainly had never told her that it was a costume party the way that Margaery had. 

“There seem to be some students here who think that because I’m pretty and from California that I’m not cut out for it here.”

Ned’s eyes flicker with understanding.  “Did they…they didn’t…”

Sansa throws her long auburn hair over her shoulder and she sees pity crossing Ned’s face.  She’d liked it better when he was checking her out in her push-up bra.

“So, you know what?  I’m going to show them what I’m made of.  A girl can too be pretty and brainy.”

“She sure can,” Ned said.  “For what it’s worth…”  His voice trails away.

“For what it’s worth?” Sansa prompts.

“For what it’s worth, the first time I noticed you, I figured you were both pretty and brainy.”

She looks at him sharply.  There’s a part of him that looks so like Joffrey—blonde and handsome.  But his eyes are blue, not green, and his lips are a little thinner and his nose straighter, and he’s as tall as she is in these heels.  _Margaery can have Joffrey.  I don’t care_ , she thinks suddenly.   _He dumped me because he wanted to go to Harvard Law and didn’t think I was smart enough to be his girlfriend.  And if she doesn’t want to be my friend…that’s her decision._

She smiles at Ned.  Ned was sweet.  Ned, at least, seemed to see her for what she was, and seemed to care too.


	29. Arya x Aegon (BVTS)

“Slayer,” he says, that smirk well in place and she could do it, she could just jam him through with a bit of wood and that would be that, one more name off her list.  But she doesn’t.  Why doesn’t she?

“Aegon,” she says through gritted teeth.  His smirk grows wider.

“Oh, don’t be like that, pet.  It will be painless.  Mostly.”

She glares him again.  “It had better be.”

He laughs.  “I can’t very well attack you without that chip in my head wracking me with pain so yes—it will be painless.  Or I’ll have something to say about it.”

“I’m sure you’ll have something to say about it regardless,” Arya says.  She opens the car door and points him inside.  “Well?  Get in.”

“Quite the invitation,” he says and he gets into her car, sliding the passenger seat back and resting his feet on the dashboard.  Arya looks at his shoes witheringly before turning her attention to the road.

“So, where exactly is this demon?” he drawls. 

“What’s it to you?” she demands.

“I want to know how long it’ll be before I get to rip his throat out and send him back to the hell that spat him out,” Aegon replies.  She sees him picking at the sleeve of his leather jacket. 

Arya snorts.  “I gathered that.  And why is that again?”

“Can’t a man have a grudge without the Slayer needing to know all his dreams and nightmares?”

“Not if he wants a ride to his vengeance,” Arya says dryly, pulling onto the interstate. 

“You drive a hard bargain, Slayer.”

“Not hard enough.  If I were harder, you’d be long dead.”

“Ahh yes, but you can’t bear to kill me because of the chip.  Even though I’ve killed and tortured and am a generally horrible—”

“Is this really helping you?” Arya demands.  She doesn’t want to be reminded of that version of Aegon.  That version isn’t the one who came and helped fight the wyrms when the hellmouth spat them out.  That version of Aegon isn’t the one who helped Gendry not bleed to death when some shrapnel hit him through the stomach.  That version of Aegon…is the same version of Aegon who sits next to her in the car right now.

 _Repentance_ , she thinks.   _Mercy is a part of justice._ She remembers her father saying that when she was little.But would Aegon repent if he didn’t have the chip keeping him from hurting people.  Arya doesn’t want to know the answer to that question.

“Well?” she prompts him, shaking the those thoughts from her head.

“Bastard raped and killed my mum,” Aegon says as blithely as if he were talking about a tea party and Arya feels her grip tighten on the steering wheel.

“What?” she breathes.

“The Mountain?  Oh yeah.  I may be a heartless, soulless thing, but I do love my mum and I’d like to rip the Mountain’s heart out myself.  Though of course, I’d also like to live, so if he’s going to rip me to shreds, be a good Slayer and stake him for me.”

Arya is very still.  She’d never once thought that Aegon was capable of…what, being human?  She’d seen him kill and maim, seen him lust and manipulate, and be a general shitbag, but this—this was unlike anything she’d ever have dreamed him capable of.  She wondered what his mother was like.

She wants to reach out and pat him on the arm.  That’s what one does, when one learns of dead parents—even with a vampire like Aegon.  That’s what she would have done if he were—

Oh no.  Oh no, she’s not thinking about this this way.  She’s dated more than enough vampires for one lifetime, she  _doesn’t_  need to go and think this way about Aegon.  She’s the Slayer, goddamnit, she’s supposed to  _kill_  vampires, not feel pity on them and feel…no.  No she’s not letting herself think about it like that.  Not even a little.

She pulls off the highway, and sees Aegon remove his feet from the dashboard and lean forward.  Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him—watches him closely, and for the first time, she notices how handsome he is.


	30. Sansa x Sandor (Star Wars AU)

There are green blasts everywhere as Sansa crosses the bridge, her footsteps echoing around her as she hurries to her cabin.  _Get there, and lock the door, and you will be safe when Stannis takes the ship._   _You are a Stark. You are a Stark. He won’t kill you. Only Ser Ilyn…_ she shudders. Her nightmares are already full of Ser Ilyn and father’s lightsaber and a head falling from a body while Sansa screams.

She hears nothing but her own breath and footsteps as she runs. Space is silent. When she’d been on Winterfell, she had thought that surely battles in the nebulae must be loud and full of flame. But they are silent. It makes it worse, in truth.

 _You will be safe,_ she tells herself as she presses the button to open the door. _Safe in your cabin. Jam the door.  No one can come in then._

She’s through and she makes to jam the door when she hears a voice.

“I knew you’d come.”  Sansa’s heart is in her throat as she whirls about and she sees Clegane there, sitting on her bed.   _Did the Queen send him to kill me?_  she wonders before her nose catches up to her head.

He smells of sweat, and blood, but mostly alcohol.   _Wine_ , she thinks.   _He’s drunk_. 

Outside, there’s blasts from the canons, green and bright, knocking into one another and showering her view with green light. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks slowly, edging towards the door again, ready to run if he makes a move.

He gets to his feet and her hand begins to tremble.  “If you scream, I’ll kill you,” he says, and she should run, she knows she should.  But there’s something in his voice.  If he was meant to kill her, ordered to…but he said he would…so why isn’t she running?  He’s still talking.  “Don’t you want to know who’s winning the battle?”

“Who?”

“I know who’s lost.  Me.”

His words are slurring.   _How much has he had to drink?_ she wonders.   _How long has he been here, away from the fighting?  Why was he in my bed?_

“What have you lost?” she asks, her hand finding the door’s button, ready to open it and run again.

“Everything.  Should have shot that blasted imp through with a blaster years ago.”

“They say he’s dead,” she says, thinking back to the bridge, and Lancel Lannister’s pale face and the way that Queen Cersei’s eyes had glowed with rage at her brother’s failure.

“Dead?  Fuck that.  I don’t want him dead.  I want him  _blasted_.”  He takes a step towards her, and Sansa’s damned legs won’t move.  They won’t move.  He grabs her wrist, and his grip is like iron.  She tries to wrench it free.  She should be running, her heart is hammering in her throat and he’s going to kill her if she screams.  But she hasn’t screamed—not yet. 

A word catches in her mind.   _Blasted_. 

_If you tell anyone what I told you, I’ll kill you._

_When I was a boy, my brother held me down and shot at me with a blaster, melted my skin off my face.  But he didn’t kill me.  Not just yet.  He got closer and closer with his shots, but they came in and stopped him before he blasted my bloody head off._

_Oh._

“Anyway, I’m going,” he says.

His words startle her from her thoughts.  “Going?” Sansa manages to ask. 

“The little bird repeats everything she says, doesn’t she?  Yes.  Going.”

“Going where?”

“Away from here.  I don’t know.  Find an escape pod and take it to the outer rim.  Somewhere. Anywhere.”

“You won’t get out,” Sansa says, “The Queen’s ordered that any ships leaving the system be blasted apart.”   _Blasted.  Is he afraid of that?  If I say blasted—will he go and get himself—_

“Not me,” he says, and if he heard the word, he didn’t make note of it.  “I got a white badge, remember?  That, and this,” he pats his lightsaber.   _Never a blaster.  Even if he’s not a Jedi Knight, he never carried a blaster…_

“Why did you come here then?” she asks, her voice trembling.   _If you scream, I’ll kill you,_ and behind him, another shower of green blasts. 

“You promised me a song, little bird.  Remember that?”

She doesn’t know what he meant.  She doesn’t.  She can’t remember.  All she can think was that there are blasts through the galaxy showering outside and that if she opens her mouth, she’d scream, and then it would all be over, he’d kill her with his light saber the way Ser Ilyn had killed her father. 

“I can’t,” she practically sobs, “I can’t, let me go—you’re scaring me.”

“Everything scares you,” he growls.  “Look at me.”

Blood covers his face, blood and sweat and soot.  It almost hides his scars, but not quite enough.  She can still see the texture of them beneath everything else.  And she can smell it—blood and sweat and soot and wine on his breath but mostly the blood, tinny in her nose.

“I could keep you safe,” he says, “I could.  They wouldn’t get past me.  No one would hurt you, ever again.”  He tugs her closer, and for a moment she thought she felt his lips against hers, thought he was going to kiss her, and she closes her eyes, willing herself far away, to Winterfell, where she wouldn’t be afraid.   “Still can’t bring yourself to look, can you?” he hisses.  Then he gives drags her across the room and throws her onto the bed and Sansa almost screams, but if she screams, he’ll kill her. He said he would, and he’s reaching for his saber, but she hasn’t screamed, he  _can’t_ , he said he would keep her  _safe_ , but it’s lit, blue light pulsing and he’s holding it to her throat.  “Sing, little bird.  Sing for your little life.”

But she can’t remember any songs.  She can’t remember a single one.  She can only hear the sound of her heart and the hum of his saber that sounds so like the hum of her father’s, her father who had hated wielding it and loathed violence and was dead but not bleeding because the lightsaber had cauterized the veins in his neck when his head had departed.  She blinks back tears, she can’t think of her father now, but when she looks at in his eyes, they are the same grey as her father’s, but not steady, and not loving, they’re angry and frightened, like her, and before she even can think of a song to sing, she hears her own voice,

_Gentle Mother, font of mercy,_  
_save our sons from war, we pray,_  
_stay the swords and stay the arrows,_  
_let them know a better day._  
_Gentle Mother, strength of women,_  
_help our daughters through this fray,_  
_soothe the wrath and tame the fury,  
_ _teach us all a kinder way._

There are more verses to the song, but she cannot remember them.  Her voice trails away, her throat dry, but even as she does so, she sees the way his grey eyes sparkle with the reflections of the blasts outside.  She watches as his face goes slack, and some instinct in her makes her reach up a hand to cup his snarled cheek and she feels wetness there.   _Blood_.  But the blood on his cheek dried long before she’d gotten there.  This is something else.

“Little bird,” he says, and the humming is gone, and the room is a little darker without the blue light of his saber. 

He backs away from her, stumbling, and she hears something clatter to the floor as he leaves.

The moment he’s gone, Sansa pelts to the door and jams it, then sinks to the floor, sobbing.  Her knees are too weak for her to get up again, so she crawls back to the bed and as she does so, her hand scrabbles across something.  She looks at it.

It’s his white card.  He had left it behind. 


	31. Ned & Robert (Daemons AU)

Lysara growls, and Ned looks around to see Robert and Thunderclap coming towards him.  Ned rests a hand on Lysara’s head, but the growling doesn’t abate.

“What is it?” he hisses out of the corner of his mouth, but Lysara doesn’t reply.  Lysara just keeps growling.

“Look,” Robert says quickly, “It’s not my fault.”

“What’s not your fault?” Ned demands quickly.  Lysara’s growls grow louder, and Ned feels his stomach twist.  "Robert–what–?“

“It needed to happen.  Or the Revolution wouldn’t…would fail.  They’d be symbols.”

Ned feels his eyes widen as he looks between Robert and Thunderclap–Thunderclap, who is oddly silent.

“Where is the czarina and her children?” Ned asks slowly.  

The only thing Ned can hear are Lysara’s growls and the sound of footsteps outside.  "I didn’t order it,“ Robert says at last.  "I didn’t.”

“They’ve been shot?” Ned asks quietly, feeling his own blood go cold. 

“One of Lannister’s men got it into his head that it would be a good idea,” Thunderclap says at last.  "He didn’t have orders to do it.“

"And I suppose,” Lysara growls, taking a step forward, and Ned grabs her raised hackles, “He didn’t have orders not to do it, either.  Convenient.”

Thunderclap screeches.  "If they’d lived, they’d–“

"How old was the baby?” Lysara snaps, her teeth clicking together in her anger.  "And the little girl?“

"It’s not going to be a revolution if a little blood isn’t spilled,” Robert bellows.

“Ah yes, a slaughter of children who have yet to prove their worth in the world,” Ned says angrily.

“They oppressed the people!”

“What can a little girl do to oppress people?” Ned asks angrily.  Lysara starts to growl again.  

Ned can’t look at Robert–can’t look at anyone.  He turns on his heel and marches away, passing Jon and Alyssa as he leaves the room.

His footsteps echo around him in the hallway.  You could hear people coming from far away the way it echoes in this place.  He wonders what it must have been like for the czarina–footsteps, anger, her children, and a line of rifles.


	32. doesn't it taste of home? (Sansa; Mythology AU)

_eat.  doesn’t it taste of home?_

she stares at the pomegranate.  it’s a winter fruit, and her father had been winter and darkness, though she’d never known winter and darkness herself.  she’d been born in winter, but her girlhood had been spent in the high summer. 

 _sweet summer child_ , her mother had called her, braiding flowers into her hair.   _more beautiful than ever i could be_.  they’d been the summer children of winter, knowing that winter would, one day, come, and her father’s ice and snow would cover the land.

she longed for her mother now.  she’d given her grapes and lemon cakes and the world had been so sweet to taste with her mother choosing the fruit.

_eat. doesn’t it taste of home?_

she’d never see her mother again.  

_i was a brother to her, but loved her far more dearly than that.  i’ll be your father now.  i’ll love you now._

_eat, doesn’t it taste of home?_

she looks at him.  he is old enough to be her father, if only barely.  not so much younger than her father had been.  he, too, has dark hair, and a beard.  he, too, loved her mother.  she’d never eaten pomegranates in her father’s hall.  it had been summer when she’d been a girl.  the seeds were so sticky.  they are a winter fruit.

he’s not her father, though.  and she is not a winter fruit, she is a summer child, they are all of them summer children, and even if her mother is gone, her father is gone, her brothers and sister are gone, that doesn’t mean that summer must go, does it?  

what does this man know of winter, anyway.  winter belonged to her father, and he–he is not her father.

 _eat.  doesn’t it taste of home?_ perhaps it will.  she’ll not know–not now.

he’ll not be the one to give her a taste of winter, a taste of home.


	33. Arya (Zootopia AU)

“oh yeah?  what are you going to do about it?”

he’s a fox, and he’s bigger than she is.  older too, and when he smiles his teeth are sharp.

“give my friend’s tickets back.  now.”  arya puts her hands on her hips.  she’s still wearing her little police cap from the play, and joffrey lets out a howl of laughter.

“taking your little pageantry too seriously, are we?  you were a cop on the stage, but don’t worry–you’ll never be one in real life.  bunnies _can’t_.”  he swipes at her, and knocks her to the ground, then crouches over her.  “remember this moment,” he hisses at her as she touches her cheek.  she’s bleeding from his claws.  “whenever you think you’ll amount to something.  remember this and know–you _wo–OW!”_

arya’s a bunny, and bunnies have strong legs for hopping…and for kicking bullying foxes in the face when they cross a line.


	34. Tormund x Brienne

once, she’d have thought he was mocking her.  she knew she was no great beauty, she knew that men only saw her as a freak.  

but when tormund looks at the scar on her cheek, nods approvingly, and says “that’s a beauty, that is.  how’d you get it?” brienne pauses.  there’s no underscore of _what are you doing in armor, woman,_ nor a mocking tone about her nose or her freckles or her height.  there’s almost respect there.

“someone who liked to bite tried to kill me.”

“stuck him with your sword, then?” tormund asks.

“no.  the boy saved me,” she says, nodding to gendry.  she shouldn’t call him a boy–he’s a man grown, in truth.  but in some ways he seems no older than podrick.

“nothing like a good scar to show you’re feisty,” he says, and to her utmost astonishment, he winks at her.  “i got several of them myself.  but they’re not in any decent place to show a lady unless she asks.”

brienne feels herself going quite red.  she doesn’t even begin to know what to say to that, which only makes tormund bark out a “har!” as he walks away.


End file.
